The CIA and my explosions

I was talking to Andrew, one of the medical residents here and a good friend of mine.

We were talking about the infamous George Bush, and somehow the discussion involved the CIA and FBI and every topic that every Arab prefers to avoid discussing.

He said, "Do you know that every phone call you make can be monitored!"

I answered, "I know they can monitor your calls, but did you mean EVERY call?"

"Yes dude, they have a computer system which listens to every single call made in America. It's a computer, not a human. However if you mention certain names or there's a sudden change in the tone of your voice a human picks up the phone and starts listening"

"Certain words??"

"Yes certain words."

I was thinking "akalna khara" since I always mention bin ladin, al qaeda, bush, explosions, Iraq and terrorism in the same sentence with any conversation I make. Some of my regular conversation with other Arab friends here would be ,

"Hey what's up?"
"I'm having Mansaf, I feel like exploding"
"Let's have mansaf Sunday, we'll explode together... he3 he3 he3"
and then by the end of the conversation and for no obvious reason I'd say "See you at 9 in Starbucks and by the way screw Bush"

Back to Andrew, he told me, "they'd also track you if you spoke negatively of the president!"

I started getting nervous, "what do you mean speak negatively?? I always say that Bush is a f***ing moron on the phone."

"That's OK, they'd only track you if you were thinking of hurting the president"

"I don't want to hurt the president, but I'm sure they're tracking me now, will they keep doing that?"

"No dude, in the beginning they'd look you up and see how did you come to America and the rest of your record and if you're OK they'll stop listening to your calls. They'll get back to the computer and they won't listen again unless you say something serious, then a human would pick up the phone and start listening again and if you're safe they go back to the computer!"

I paused for a second, then Andrew asked me , "Do they do the same thing in Jordan?"

"No, in Jordan we're more advanced...... it's always a human listening and no matter what you say, they'll keep listening all the time"

That night I went back home, turned off the lights in my apartment, closed the curtains, and took out the left-overs of the mansaf from last night and started it eating it quickly and at the end, I really really felt like exploding, and that felt so damn good.